Master Bath Design

I thought it might be nice to take a break from construction and show a little design this week.  Okay, so the construction at the house right now is not exactly sexy (electrical, plumbing, HVAC) and rather than trying to narrate pictures of wiring in a witty way I thought a design post might go over a little easier.

For those of you that might be new, let me give you the run down on what we want in a master bath.  Well, let me back up a minute and tell you a little bit about myself.  I am a flat out complete bathroom junky.  Ever since I was a wee one I have loved bath time.  I happily played for hours with my tub toys, and Santa always brought me bath salts or fizzy cubes in my stocking.  Fast forward to my moody teenage years and you could find me soaking in a tub for hours, sulking and reading trashy fiction.  In other words, the bathroom has always been my refuge, a place to relax and have fun...and an essential part of my well being.  So, this bathroom-lovin', tub-soakin' girl wound up buying her first house with this for a master bath:

 Behold the wonders of tiny tub!

I know you must be thinking I was crazy for buying a house with such a tiny and craptacular master bath, but I was kinda happy it was that way.  You see, when we were house hunting we looked at many old houses with crappily (and expensively) renovated master baths.  I really didn't want to pay the price for a fancy bathroom that I didn't like/didn't go with the style of the house/looked butt ugly.  So I was happy when we found this house with a perfectly functional master bath that we could feel guilt-free about tearing out.  I knew someday I would replace that bathroom with the one of my dreams-  and that day is NOW!

So, what do we want in a master bath?  I knew I wanted a big, spacious, open shower, but I didn't want it to have those sleek glass enclosures everyone loves:

 Gorgeous, but a HUGE pain in the ass!

 Why?  Because I have friends that just remodeled their bathroom and they put in a huge double shower with those gorgeous glass doors.  They told me those doors are HELL to keep clean.  Apparently you have to treat them with Rain-X and, every time you use the shower, you have to carefully squeegee the glass walls down with one of those squeegee things that folks use to clean windshields at gas stations.  Who wants to do that kind of work when you are all nice and clean and relaxed?  So I knew I wanted the luxury of a large shower, but sans the glass doors, thanks.

I also knew that essential to my happiness would be a huge honkin' bath tub that I could soak in.  My heart went pitter-pat when I saw this tub on True Blood:

Hot Nordic vampire not included.

So with all that in mind, our designer came up with this for our bathroom:

You'll open the bathroom door and our old fireplace will still be on the right.  We wanted to clean it out and modify it with a coal-look gas insert, but that's going to be too expensive, so for now it's purely decorative.  Along the left wall you will see my HUGE HONKIN' TUB HELLZ YEAH and on the right wall will be a marble counter top with two under mount sinks.  Straight ahead will be this semi-wall for privacy in the shower/toilet area.  We based it off this inspiration picture from the craftsman style Frederick C. Grable house:

Here's a closer look at first the right, then the left wall:

As you can see, we're going to have lots of neat detail with the tile.  Because we are trying to keep this bathroom as historic looking as possible (yes I know the tub is way too big for back then, but I don't care), we decided to go with the classic look of white subway tiles.

I can feel myself relax just looking at this photo.

And for the shower fixtures, I'd like something that looks a bit old and grungy...like it's been there for 60 years.

This finish has been surprisingly hard to find though, so we'll keep looking.  For the floor, we're going to go with classic hexagonal subway tiles, with some black tiles for accents.   As you recall, our cat Mulder had an opinion about that:

Mulder has very strong feelings about accent tiles.

And finally, to add a punch of color into the space, the windows (one above the tub and one on the wall in the shower/toilet area) will be stained glass.  I don't have a picture to post of that yet, but we're meeting with the stained glass artist this weekend to look at concept sketches. 

I thought I'd wrap up this post by showing you a bit of the construction that is going on in the master bath area right now.  Here you see the workers cutting a big hole in the floor for my tub:

 They are doing that so that the tub can sit at a comfortable, easy-to-get-into height.  This is very important, because if anyone could trip/fall/kill themselves getting into and out of a tub, it's me.  Here you can see they are reinforcing the floor to accept the weight of the tub:

This is to ensure that my fat wet butt does not go through the floor.

Here's the start of the privacy wall that will separate the shower and toilet area from the rest of the bathroom:

 Oh noes! They broke my crappy fan globe!

This is the tub area, with it's surround all built up:

Here is the shower area, with the floor cut out for the shower pan:

 

 And finally I thought I'd leave you folks with a few funny photos.  My tub got delivered this week, and to keep it safe and out of the way the workers put it in the guest bathroom.  As you can see, the darn thing takes up the WHOLE guest bath:

This is one SERIOUS tub.

 Earlier this week, the hubby and I had to make a decision on shower layout, so we made this mock-up shower simulator in the dining room at our rental house:

 Mulder has serious thoughts about shower seat placement.

Well that's it for this week folks, hope you enjoyed a little taste of master bath design!